Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Ranayna]

For my personal use, Windows Defender and Windows Firewall are simply good enough. Alongside my router's firewall and NAT rules.
I see no reason at all to pay a subscription to a scaremongering third party.

I concur with @james_s: Securing your browser is nowadays the most important thing. And an ad- and scriptblocker will already do a really good job at that. Most of the time, a scriptblocker alone will be enough, since most ads heavily rely on tracking scripts.

[PlainName]

I'm not too fussed about a PC firewall and really only use one to stop the annoying Windows prompting. But I brought it up here because that was the indication that the AV was stopped, and even if you don't use or want one,  something subtle happening that has no explanation is, IME, something to investigate (and not just on PCs).

As to whether the AV part is useful or necessary, I think it is. Loads of people say their AV protects them because they've never had it trigger, but they are fools - the proof of it's working is that it DOES get triggered. I am quite a cautious person and take various steps to mitigate risk. I don't run strange downloads, don't open email attachments, have script and ad blockers, don't visit dodgy sites, etc. Nevetherless, I have been this >< close to being caught out with some phishing, and Bitdefender often blocks various things. Perhaps they are false alarms, but so far they are all things that I would be suspicious about (or even know they're dodgy).

But... I only use it for on-access scanning. If I let it loose on my disk for a scan, firstly it would be making the system crawl for hours but, more importantly, it would hassle me about stuff like Nirsoft tools and the like. Which is both good and annoying. My reasoning is that any bad stuff is going to be dangerous at the point of use, hence that's when you want to check it. If you scan a disk you might find something you otherwise wouldn't (if you never opened it, perhaps) but exploits that turn up later won't have been matched at that time, so you have to keep scanning often. Sod that.

I should also note that I've been around since DOS days when saving (now) trivial amounts of memory to enable network drivers or whatever was de rigueur (not to mention a similar attitude when programming embedded systems), so I have always been quite circumspect about what runs in the background and takes up resources. AV is something I don't really like but is necessary because, well, I'm human and make mistakes. It's like an emergency stop button on machinery - it's not going to give you an impenetrable cloak of steel, but it raises the odds of getting away with something stupid.

[Ranayna]

Many browsers, for example Chrome and Firefox, can block known phishing websites on their own. No third party software required.
As far as i know, Internet Explorer and pre-Chromium Edge did this on a windows level, with "SmartScreen"
If the phishing site is too new to be known, the thirdparty tool will not be able to protect you anyway.

I have been burned by third party av software in the past. I had several cases of mistakenly deleted system files, killing windows or major drivers. These were well documented cases each time, that affected quite a few people, so not a local infection. After the third different AV software killed windows, i threw it all away and only used the then relatively new Defender.

It is rare to get Defender triggered, i think it is easily more than a year since i saw it blocking something, and that was a false positive.
Still, i am quite confident that my machine is clean, since i am very careful about the sites from which i download software.

Since SSDs and multicore processors have been become common i don't care all that much anymore about what actually runs in the background. The local ressources are there anyway, i don't really care that one core of my 16 (8 core CPU with HT) is sitting at 20% or so, and some processes using a couple hundred megabytes of my 32 gigabytes RAM.

[PlainName]

By 'phishing' I mean stuff like email. Many times I get correct-looking emails but for something I don't use. Sometimes I get them for things I do use, and just now and then I get them for something I do use and am expecting an email from. There ain't no browser that will protect me from that.

Further, browsers by themselves are not too hot. You need addons, and if you don't know the right addon you're not that well protected. And with Google hobbling browsers to allow more ads through, and ad blockers allowing paid-for ads through, they are hardly the bastion of digital health. Frankly, you're a fool if you rely on browsers to save you, and that's just surfing - there are LOTS more ways for badness to reach and affect you.

[Ranayna]

Ok, privately i use relatively little email. I only use webmail, so there the browser is the line of defense I am also not signed up to all that many services, the most important would be Paypal and Amazon (since those have access to my bank account) and of course the email service itself.

I agree about Chrome. I recently read report about increasing Chrome errors about "Unsafe Ports". Whatever makes a port unsafe :p It hides to much, and it is sad to see that Firefox always seems to try to copy Chrome.
I currently use Firefox, and except for uBlock, i have no addons enabled. uBlock also does not have that "acceptable ads" crap that Adblocker has.

I know what software i have installed on my computer. Much of it is just for gaming, for example the Steam client, which is one of the few things i actually have in autostart.
Regarding productivity software, i mostly use open source, except for Office 365, which was just too cheap to not get it, if you can share a famility subscription with more than 3 people.
I do not use any online banking at all. My important passwords are in KeePass, without Browser integration, the less important stuff is in the Firefox keystore (with Master password) as well. And yes, some of them by now have been flagged by the HaveIBeenPwned collaboration that Firefox does. I am aware, i dont't really care about those crappy accounts that i have not used in many years anyway. That i don't use the same password on multiple sites should be obvious.

Windows telemetry and fluff (Cortana, online search, and who knows what else) is as far disabled as i can do this on Win 10 Pro, without affecting Windows Update. Security Updates are installed automatically, Feature Upgrades are *not*. I regularly check the telemetry settings with O&O Shutup 10. Yes, third party, but the tool is fully portable and does not install.
My daily runner account is not and admin account.

I have no inbound rules allowed in my router firewall, no port forwardings, and my provider does not even support IPv6, so there is no way to directly access my computer or any other device on my network from the outside. The firmware of the router is kept up to date, this is my own device and not a locked down one from a provider. There are no Alexas or general server dependent "Internet of Shit" devices on the network.

I know that this is not 100% safe. Simply *nothing* is 100% safe, except a cut cable. There always can be 0day vulnerabilities. I believe i know what i am doing though to get a reasonably safe home network, without too much effort.
I already have to keep up with all this crap at work, so "good enough" is good enough for my home network :p
*sheesh* What a ramble... I think i need to dig out the "Old man yells at cloud" meme again. 

[DrG]

*sheesh* What a ramble... I think i need to dig out the "Old man yells at cloud" meme again. 

How are you pronouncing "meme", it may be worse than you think   [re: "No, I think it's pronounced MiMi, two Me s"]




My peeve is when commercials are actually funny because they hired real comedy writers.

[Red Squirrel]

Another one to add to the list, well 2:

1: Sites that just arbitrarily forget your password.  They'll just say  your password is wrong even though you use a password manager and KNOW it's right. You are forced to use forget password option to reset it. In some cases it won't let you set it to the same thing you were trying to enter in first place and it says it's already the same password! 

2: I see this more with corporate internal stuff.  Sites that refuse to remember your login info despite having an option and they keep prompting for  your password every single time.  There is this internal site we use to keep job aids, processes etc and it's so annoying, every time you open it or click a new link you need to login, even within like a 1 minute interval.  When you click on a document it will open and then you have to login again.  So freaking annoying.   When security goes too far and becomes this user unfriendly to me that is just too excessive and will even force people to try to find workarounds.   For example I'm often tempted to build a device that can emulate a keyboard and I just need to press a button and it auto fills the password. This would be a terrible security practice though, but it's very tempting. 

[james_s]

By 'phishing' I mean stuff like email. Many times I get correct-looking emails but for something I don't use. Sometimes I get them for things I do use, and just now and then I get them for something I do use and am expecting an email from. There ain't no browser that will protect me from that.

Further, browsers by themselves are not too hot. You need addons, and if you don't know the right addon you're not that well protected. And with Google hobbling browsers to allow more ads through, and ad blockers allowing paid-for ads through, they are hardly the bastion of digital health. Frankly, you're a fool if you rely on browsers to save you, and that's just surfing - there are LOTS more ways for badness to reach and affect you.

I *never* blindly click a link in an email, no matter how legit it looks, unless the email is a direct result of something I just did, like sign up for something or reset my password where it comes immediately. If I get an email that looks like it's from my bank, I manually type in the website of my bank. Even when I'm fairly sure it's legit, I still mouse over the URL to make sure it's going to where it says it is, on several occasions I've seen a dyndns redirect instead.

I don't rely on browsers to save me, I rely on my own situational awareness. I assume everything is nefarious until proven otherwise and so far what I'm doing has always worked. I also make frequent backups of my important files which makes me almost immune to ransomware. Getting infected would be a minor inconvenience rather than a disaster.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Rabbits.

My place looks like Caddyshack.

[Ranayna]

@Red Squirrel:
If a site "forgets" your password like that, this may be an indication that they got hacked, and expire all passwords, but not telling you why.
Or it's run by incompetents. Or both :p

While we are on the topic of annoying wildlife:
Since we don't have a cat anymore, we have a metric ton of birds in my area. There are several recognizably new species in the area now.
Nightingales are nice and all, but boy are they annoying when they decide to start singing in the middle of night right under your windowsill. It's astonishing how loud such a tiny bird can get.

[james_s]

I never did care much for birds. They have their place in the ecosystem of course but they crap all over my car, wake me up early in the morning and I've had repeated problems with woodpeckers pecking holes in the trim on the back corner of my house. At least that hasn't been as much of an issue lately since I patched up the last batch with a really hard filler they seem to not enjoy pecking.

[IDEngineer]

If the topic has shifted to birds, I'll open with Canada Geese: The inflamed boil on the backside of the avian world.

[themadhippy]

i wonder if,in an alternative universe theirs a forum for wildlife were the topics go along the lines of "i hate mankind they keep destroying our homes" or  "why are the humans wiping out our food sources" or even "bloody street lamps keeping me up all night "

[Red Squirrel]

As a Canadian I am sorry about Canada geese.

But this is why we are so friendly.  Once a year as a tradition, we direct all our anger and hatred into Canada geese, and then send them south. 

[TimFox]

See Leviticus 16:8-10.

[Sal Ammoniac]

If the topic has shifted to birds, I'll open with Canada Geese: The inflamed boil on the backside of the avian world.

I once worked at a company whose building was surrounded by a large artificial pond. There was a walkway leading to the building across the pond. The whole site was home to hundreds of Canada Geese, and every morning the maintenance people would have to hose down the walkway to remove the goose shit. Early arrivers who got there before the hose down had to navigate wall-to-wall shit to get to the building. I saw numerous goose attacks on people crossing the walkway, including one that sent a woman to the hospital.

[james_s]

i wonder if,in an alternative universe theirs a forum for wildlife were the topics go along the lines of "i hate mankind they keep destroying our homes" or  "why are the humans wiping out our food sources" or even "bloody street lamps keeping me up all night "

There has always been competition between different animal species for various finite resources. Humans are just another animal species competing for many of those same resources.

[IDEngineer]

Canadian Geese are vile, worthless creatures that should have a bounty on them. Instead, back in the early 1900's Canada and the USA signed a treaty which, among other things, actually protects these demons.      So there is zero human backpressure on this invasive species, and since they're not native to many areas they've occupied in the States there's also basically zero "natural" backpressure.

As a result, they're also an enormous environmental disaster. They poop roughly their own body weight each day, and their poop is ultra-rich in phosphorus which causes eutrophication which in turn causes excessive weed growth and death of animal life in the lakes these geese infest. Environmentalists should be supporting their widespread eradication if only because of the environmental damage they cause to nature in their artificially-invaded regions.

Consider this: In Seattle, a bastion of feel-good animal-huggers, the local government was hiring people to shoot the Canadian Geese in city and county parks a while back. And I didn't read of a single complaint. My only problem with it was that they got the financial arrangement backwards: They could have turned it revenue-positive by selling goose tags.

Don't get me wrong, I adore animals and they love me right back. Heck, we've been known to put food out for deer and elk during especially bad winters. But Canadian Geese are the exception. They're not animals, they're environmentally disasterous vermin with wings that are protected by international treaty.

[SilverSolder]

Canadian Geese are vile, worthless creatures that should have a bounty on them. Instead, back in the early 1900's Canada and the USA signed a treaty which, among other things, actually protects these demons.      So there is zero human backpressure on this invasive species, and since they're not native to many areas they've occupied in the States there's also basically zero "natural" backpressure.

As a result, they're also an enormous environmental disaster. They poop roughly their own body weight each day, and their poop is ultra-rich in phosphorus which causes eutrophication which in turn causes excessive weed growth and death of animal life in the lakes these geese infest. Environmentalists should be supporting their widespread eradication if only because of the environmental damage they cause to nature in their artificially-invaded regions.

Consider this: In Seattle, a bastion of feel-good animal-huggers, the local government was hiring people to shoot the Canadian Geese in city and county parks a while back. And I didn't read of a single complaint. My only problem with it was that they got the financial arrangement backwards: They could have turned it revenue-positive by selling goose tags.

Don't get me wrong, I adore animals and they love me right back. Heck, we've been known to put food out for deer and elk during especially bad winters. But Canadian Geese are the exception. They're not animals, they're environmentally disasterous vermin with wings that are protected by international treaty.

Please lean back in the couch, relax, and tell us more about your feelings about Canadian Geese, before we move on to discussing your relationship with your father! 

[IDEngineer]

See, my father's nickname was "Goose" which probably had something to do with it....

Just kidding. I actually liked Canadian Geese before moving to the Pacific Northwest. Until I learned the truth, that is.

[TimFox]

Suburban office parks, including the one where I worked before retiring, feature ponds (for flood retention) with mowed grass leading up to them.  To geese, this is a vision of Paradise, and they decide to move there and work from home.  Why commute?

[Circlotron]

People and organisations that jump down your throat and criticise you for not being “inclusive” because you have a point of view that is different to theirs, thereby demonstrating that they are the ones that are not “inclusive”...

[IDEngineer]

People and organisations that jump down your throat and criticise you for not being “inclusive” because you have a point of view that is different to theirs, thereby demonstrating that they are the ones that are not “inclusive”...

Such people are amazingly hypocritical yet they cannot see it in themselves. True on every edge of the political landscape. Nobody has an exclusive on hypocrisy, it seems. If they did it would be easier to fence them off by themselves!

[Circlotron]

Semiconductor manufacturers that publish mosfet data graphs and swap the dependent and independent variable. e.g. they put the Vds along the bottom and the Id vertically along the side. Who on earth applies a certain drain-source voltage to a mosfet and wants to know the drain current??? MUCH more likely to pass a certain drain current and want to know the drain-source voltage drop. The known (independent) variable should be across the bottom of the graph and the unknown (dependent) variable should be on the side, not the other way around! Grrr.

[TimFox]

This has been the normal format for these graphs, including FETs and BJTs, since vacuum tube characteristic curves (before 1930).  It allows you to put a load line on the graph and see where the constant-Vgs lines intersect the load characteristic.  (BJT graphs typically showed lines of constant Ib instead of Vbe.)